UNITEDRANT

Return of the Rant

Sometime in 2004 a blog was born. Not from some misplaced desire to earn web 2.0 blogosphere social media wealth and notoriety. Nor a genuine belief that the site would actually attract any readers, let alone ones that cared. But a basic primeaval urge embedded into the DNA of every football fan. The need, when things aren’t going your team’s way, to rant and then rant some more.

For Manchester United fans 2004-5 wasn’t a pretty time. United lost the league to Chelsea by 18 points and were beaten in the FA Cup final by an inferior Arsenal side. United also went out of the Champions League at the first knockout stage, somewhat meakly, to eventual finalists Milan. Worse still the winners were our great rivals from down the M62. The word that dare not speak its name.

But fans suffered not solely because the team was (I’ll be kind) in a period of transition but because our leader, Sir Alex Ferguson, was undergoing a period of mental transformation too. From a coach whose genuine belief was that his team could ‘score one more’ than the opposition, to a pragmatist tactician. The end result was a second, glorious, Champions League victory in May 2008 for which all United fans are grateful. The original Rant called for his head, and has been proven wrong.

But travel is just as much about the journey as the destination and this road was far from smooth. A website found its voice.

And while the site didn’t make a dime, at its zenith around 1,000,000 pages per month of editorial were read. That’s 1,000,000. More than 15,000 fans received the site’s newsletter twice a week and there were 5,000 registered users on a rabidly active forum. Your editor was asked to write for national newspapers and became a regular pundit on both broadcast and Internet radio. It was a surreal, if shortlived, experience.

Sadly, love rarely lasts forever. A little over two years after it’s inception the site died. It had to. It wasn’t pretty, nobody’s proud about it and you’ll forever be spared the details.

Now it is time for Rant to rise again. While we can’t promise to bring you the depth – or length – of analysis, or frequency of editorial we once did, but we’ll try our best. It’s the same editorial team, back from the dead.

Good point! The proof is in the pudding. If the editorial is any good then you’ll know. Mark, Spike, me (Ed) and a bunch of others. And I suppose there wasn’t a team.. just me, a few guests, Mark who did the match previews/reviews.

Well frankly they can just go f… themselves! (close enough to the old rant for ya?!!) We had about 5 mods I believe, at least ones that I approved. But I did approve a couple of super mods who could add new ones. In any case how would this prove who I am? Ping Mark @ MUFC Info.

I remember those rants from you! Many of them were true, and I liked to read your articles. But I never liked the idea of calling for Fergie’s head everytime you said it. Saying sorry is the least thing you can do now. Fans should support their team when things aren’t going well. But you called for Fergie’s head. Well he’s not God, and even he can get things wrong. But to say that he lost it etc was a stupid thing to do, see how it came back to bite you! The red machine marching on for (hopefully) a 3rd title in a row!!! I hope you learned your lesson.

MATES!!!! I was a frequent UnitedRant reader during the dark years (2004-2006) and I was devastated when the site just went dead, I still remember the last post being about our loss against the arses away in winter 2006… EXCELLENT to see u back lads, please keep up the great work u did back then…

Delighted you are back – venting in this site helped me through some dark days. I too was one who wanted Fergies head on a plate – felt very much he sold us out. We do still have the monstrous debt but despite an economic crisis we appear to be surviving. I still fear we will get news similar to the scousers who must be flying very close to the financial wind. just great that the site is back up – well done ed.